In Episode #290, Eric and Neil discuss how to delegate marketing tasks. Tune in to learn the key things you, as a leader, need to recognize before passing off a task to someone on your team. Can they create a replicable process for that task? Will they be able to find a solution on their own or will they be needing help? Find out how important delegation is—not just for marketing—but for every type and aspect of business and how to do it effectively.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Delegate Marketing Tasks
• 00:43 – Delegation is not just for marketing. In any business, you’ll have to learn how to delegate
• 00:50 – Eric recommends reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Checklist Manifesto
  • 01:00 – These books will help you decide what to delegate
• 01:09 – Eric has his own checklist in Evernote of the things that he needs to do
• 01:14 – As you get bigger, there are tasks, like booking travel and scheduling, that can be assigned to someone else who can do it for you
  • 01:20 – You can free up your time to do things that are more worthy of your time
  • 01:28 – Learning to prioritize first will help you delegate better
• 01:35 – The 2 types of people that you can delegate things to—first, there are the self-sufficient ones who can do things their own
  • 01:41 – Second, the ones that need training and are not that good at figuring things out on their own
• 01:50 – What Neil does is he figures out what kind of a person someone is
  • 01:53 – When Neil gets to the ones that can do things their own, he gives them instructions and asks them to make a replicable process so other people will know how to do the task
  • 02:04 – If the person isn’t creative and cannot figure out steps on their own, Neil or someone from the team will teach that person
  • 02:43 – Even if the person doesn’t do it the way you want, you can give him a few rounds of critique; then, he’ll start to do it the way you like
• 03:04 – People somehow cringe on the topic of having a process
• 03:25 – If you want to take your business to another level, you have to create a culture of documentation or creating screencast so you can easily hand it to another person  
  • 03:34 – Training people repeatedly consumes time
• 03:42 – When Eric hires new marketing staff, they’re subscribed in an entrepreneur campaign
  • 04:01 – After they’ve gone through it automatically, they’ll understand and move faster
• 04:30 – What’s empowering for Eric, is that, as a leader you tell them exactly what you want them to do and let them do it
  • 04:45 – Having a good hiring process makes it more about the team and not just about you
• 04:53 – Just make sure when you’re delegating a task, you always create a process
  • 05:00 – The biggest mistake that people make is that they don’t try things out for themselves and don’t know how difficult things are
  • 05:20 – A process should always be tweaked
• 05:45 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year annual subscription of Design Pickle, a design service where you can request unlimited design each month
  • 05:58 – Subscribe, rate and review Marketing School
  • 06:00 – Text MARKETINGSCHOOL to 33444
• 06:25– That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

1. Delegation is important in every business—there’s no way around it, especially if your company continues to grow.
2. Having a process in place makes it easier for the team and new hires to adapt to your workflow and what you need as a leader.
3. When you delegate a task to someone else, ask them to create a replicable process and make sure you’ve done the task first so you know what to expect.

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